


Mirror, Mirror

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 23:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1282576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted by jkateel on Tumblr: Maybe some young Morrigan? When she had her mirror?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror, Mirror

She didn’t have pretty things.

It wasn’t useful, her mother said, to be pretty. Easy for her to say. Flemeth had let go of her beauty a long time ago. It had been a  _choice_. But Morrigan, all awkward angles and stubborn lumps of fat in the wrong places—she’d never known pretty. She’d known peculiar, and powerful, but not pretty.

But the mirror—the mirror was beautiful, and her fingers itched to possess it. A fine golden handle, and a glinting smooth surface, and the jewels glittering around the frame: it was as refined as a thing could be, as far from her life as she could imagine. It would be nothing like looking into the warped glass at home.

Her eyes strayed to the noblewoman, visible through the window of her carriage. Her fine hair, like so much spun gold, piled in smooth curls atop her head. Her features were perfect porcelain, her lips red as blood. But her eyes didn’t see as Morrigan’s did, and the little sparrow perched on the bush beside her carriage raised no alarm. When Morrigan whistled, the woman only glanced out and smiled at the bird before going back to her book.

_A beautiful fool_ , Morrigan thought, and fluttered to the trunks packed in the back of the carriage. The driver, cursing and muttering to himself beneath the cracked front wheel, didn’t see the sparrow become a girl.

She’d seen the woman tuck the mirror into this trunk, right on top, not five moments before. With practiced hands, she eased the locks open and slipped an arm into the trunk. Only a few seconds of groping and her fingers fastened onto the cool, smooth handle. The gold sang beneath her touch, a clear high ringing of wealth and pleasure.

The noblewoman was silent, and the driver muttered to himself still. She redid the locks and ran, silent on bare feet, back to the fringe of trees that marked the beginning of the Wilds.

When the sun began to set, she found a comfortable tree to lean her back against. The prize that she had clutched to her chest slowly came away. She saw the elegant backing first: delicate patterns in the gold, crisscrossing crystalline gemstones. They sparkled even in the fading light.

She hesitated, then turned the mirror over and looked her fill.

The creature in the glass looked nothing like the smudged girl that Morrigan knew. Her cheeks were ruddy with running, her dark hair dewy with sweat, but she had smooth skin and heavy-lidded eyes, a firm chin, full lips. She looked nothing like the noblewoman, but  _everything_ like her.

She sat and stared as the air chilled around her, and days later, when Flemeth dashed her treasure to the floor, she kept that image fixed in her mind, going over it carefully with magic so as to never forget.

The Warden had hair like that noblewoman’s, Morrigan thought, when it caught the light of their campfire. Hair like the gold of the mirror in her tentative hands, offered up with an anxious little smile.


End file.
